


breathe in, breathe out, let the human in

by dennisrickmans



Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: Character Study, me chatting shit about dotty for almost 2000 words, she's so complex!! who is she!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22954936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dennisrickmans/pseuds/dennisrickmans
Summary: Dotty values grief the same way she values anything else, taken with a bitter smile and a sharp comment. (This is a lie.)Dotty hates her father and never spares him a sentimental thought. (This is a lie.)Dotty grieves her father the same way she grieves for herself, a hole in her chest filled with lost opportunities and dead love. (This is true.)//or dotty on thoughts she doesn't say.
Relationships: Bobby Beale & Dotty Cotton, Dot Cotton & Dotty Cotton, Nick Cotton & Dotty Cotton, Rebecca Fowler & Dotty Cotton
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	breathe in, breathe out, let the human in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hissingmiseries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hissingmiseries/gifts).



> um yes who is dotty?? wrote this and I still don't know lmao  
> dedicated to @hissingmiseries bc she wrote a dotty cotton fic and it is *chef's kiss* so go read that bc it is,,,,,incredible  
> yeah uh enjoy!! my tumblr is @dennisrickmans if u wanna yell at me lmao  
> \- nic

Dotty values grief the same way she values anything else, taken with a bitter smile and a sharp comment. (This is a lie.)

Dotty hates her father and never spares him a sentimental thought. (This is a lie.)

Dotty grieves her father the same way she grieves for herself, a hole in her chest filled with lost opportunities and dead love. (This is true.)

//

Dotty curls up in her bed (It’s not her bed, not really. Sonia told her that Nick used to sleep in here and now she lies awake at night wondering if she’s lying in the exact position he used to lay in, if he was just a man in those little hours of the night or if he schemed even then, more monster than ever. She runs through her concealer trying to cover up the dark shadows under her eyes these days.) and imagines other versions of herself.

One version of herself grew up in this house with Nick and Dot but Nick was kind and Dot loved them both dearly and they had tea everyday together and laughed and all the walls had Dot’s old wallpaper on it and it was nice. (Nick’s face is blurry in these fantasies, like a phantom, a ghost of someone who never existed. Dotty doesn’t linger on these dreams too much, she’s not one for dreaming of impossibilities.)

Another version of her is one where everything happens the way it did – Nick, pills, Dot, Wales – but Dotty comes back different. Dotty comes back with soft smiles and flowery dresses and apologies and everyone loves her, and she gives her own love out freely. (Platitudes have always tasted like falsities on her tongue; this fantasy isn’t her, it’s another phantom, one of a girl who died the moment she met her father.)

Most nights she just turns over and tries to sleep. No time to dream about things that will never happen.

//

Bex is nice in a way she doesn’t expect. Dotty expects judgemental looks and self-righteous frowns, for Bex to think she’s a better person and to let Dotty know whenever she could. But Bex is just tired, the bags under her eyes are bigger than Dotty’s and she smiles at Dotty, soft, like she’s actually her friend. (She is, Dotty thinks, she is. Nick’s voice is especially sharp whenever someone is kind and it feels like twisting a limb whenever she ignores him.)

They both stay up late some nights, hunched over cooling cups of tea with the only light being a few candles they found beneath the sink, Dot’s probably, and Bex tells her all sorts of things. Usually what drama had gone on while she was in Wales – _Did you really not know that Callum was engaged to Whitney?_ – but sometimes it’s quiet confessions with dramatic shadows waving across their faces – _Sometimes I just feel…empty, y’know?_

There are never any confessions from Dotty, though she does consider it. She imagines opening her mouth, feel the words press against her teeth – _There are times where I’m not sure if it was all Nick or I was responsible for everything I did, I’m not sure if I can be good because my blood is bad, it’s sour in my veins, I hear Nick’s voice in my head sometimes and it shouldn’t be so hard to ignore him but it is, does that mean I am a bad person, am I a bad person, am I -_ _?_

Instead she swallows them down with cold tea and smiles at Bex, all teeth, and asks if she wants another cup.

(And now Sonia’s stolen money from Dot and Bex is gone, moved out and Dotty sits up, alone, with an empty mug and whispers her secrets into it, just for her and the candles)

//

Walford is different now but she’s not sure what she expected. Everything still looks the same on the surface but then the bustle starts, and the people come out, most of them on school runs, the chatter loud and insistent, and Dotty doesn’t recognises most of them.

In some ways it’s comforting, the feeling must be a two-way street, and so these people must look at her and think she’s just Dot’s granddaughter, easy on the eyes with a penchant for mesh tops and boots. (Other times it makes her want to scream, scream that she’s awful and evil and she tried to kill Dot and she tried to kill Nick and her blood is festering beneath her skin, look, look at the rot, look at the filth. But – but, most of the time, she’s just grateful)

The ones who do know make her spine stiffen, ready for a barbed comment about her father, the name _Nick Cotton_ thrown like a bomb with shrapnel that digs into her flesh. They think she’s just as bad, she can tell. They’re waiting for someone to turn up dead so they can nod their heads, self-satisfied, all _I knew it, I told you, didn’t I? Bad to the bone, just like her father_. (Dotty usually jumps in before them, poison dripping from her tongue, she can’t feel their barbs if she cuts them first, right?)

So, yes. Walford is different. But nothing’s changed, not really. Affairs, mysterious disappearances and Dotty, taller with boobs now but still Nick Cotton’s daughter.

//

Bobby is sweet in a way she thinks she could have been. He looks haunted at times and when he doesn’t, his face is soft and childlike, big eyes peering at Dotty as though he is wondering who she is. He must like what he sees because he smiles at her a lot, no teeth, and when he speaks to her, his voice is quiet, his face soft with a blush.

He invites her around for dinner sometimes and she never goes but he doesn’t seem to hold it against her, just blinks and invites her around again. One time, she feels bad enough that she stands outside his back door for an hour, frozen, listening to the sound of his family eating and laughing together. There’s an ache in her chest, a cavern that wants to be filled but her father’s voice tells her to cut it bigger, to let it engulf her until she’s a blackhole, a whirlpool that destroys everything in her path.

Bobby opens the door just as she’s about to leave, face wide with surprise, a bag filled with rubbish clutched in his hand. She opens her mouth to – what? Apologise? She’s not sure if she can, and feels bile rise in her throat – but Bobby just shuts the door behind him and steps around her, shoves the bag in the bin – fails for a second, there’s so much rubbish piled into it, and he smiles at her sheepishly, like they’re friends, like they’ve never not been friends – and then sits on his backstep and looks up at her, face illuminated by the moonlight.

(She sits next to him and she doesn’t say anything, acid is at the back of her tongue and she doesn’t want to be mean to Bobby, so many people are and she, selfishly, wants to be someone he likes, someone he turns to when others cruel and he needs someone to be kind. Kindness isn’t exactly Dotty’s forte but she can do this, she can sit and listen to him murmur about things that don’t really matter – how his dinner was, what Ian has done to annoy everyone this week, a joke Habiba told him yesterday – and when he reaches over and wraps his fingers around her wrist and presses to feel her pulse thrum, she doesn’t flinch away so he can smile.)

Bobby looks at her like he gets what it feels like to be less person and more story and so she sits on his backstep and bares her teeth when people stare too long at him. (It feels nice, looking out for someone, makes her feel big, like someone to be proud of. And Bobby and Bex both grin at her when she visits so she must be doing something right.)

//

Dot is how she remembers her – sharp-tongued and kind in the way that only hard-assed old women can be – but now she’s frailer, her fingers are all sharp now and she seems tired in a way that someone is when they’ve lived a hard life for so long. (Dotty wonders if there’s a pattern in the people she surrounds herself with, if she’s drawn to those with extra weight attached to their limbs.)

She calls her Kirsty sometimes and it feels like a wall between them. Dotty knows it’s her name, her real name not a scheme, but when Dot says it, it feels like an acknowledge of the history between them, of the ghost of a man who stands in the corner of every room she’s in. But mostly Dot calls her Dotty and it makes them both smile and Dotty hands her a cup of tea and there’s no hesitation when she takes a sip and it makes her heart warm.

Dot is starting to forget things, though. Small things like where she left her purse and what day of the week it is, and Dotty feels every thing forgotten like a needle in her side, tiny pricks that bring her back to reality, a reality in which Dot is old and frail and not the Gran who once threw her over her lap and smacked her bum.

Dotty looks at her grandmother and wants to apologise for everything Nick did, for the lies she told when she was younger, for all the trouble they both caused. She says none of it, but Dot seems to know anyway, and presses a kiss to her forehead when she says goodnight, her lips cool and Dotty thinks the crick she gets in her neck is worth it.

//

There are so many things that Dotty won’t say, because she’s not sure how much of it is true and how much of it is what she just feels like she should be feeling.

Some things are better kept quiet because they’re too awful to be heard. (Like how Dotty hates her father for killing any version of them both that could’ve been nice and soft, but she also misses him like a limb at times. He was the monster who used to hide under her bed but now hides inside her head and gives her sleepless nights, but she used to hold his hand and it was just a firm grip with worn callouses. How evil could he have been? She had held his hand.)

She pricked her finger the other day and looked at how red the blood was. _Am I a bad person?_ She’d asked. The blood hadn’t answered but it had stained the carpet. That was answer enough she supposed and felt Nick Cotton smile as she thinks about how Sonia had stolen money, and how much better Dotty could have done it.


End file.
